Friday, March 30, 2007

Gonzalez Scandal and News Coverage

Here's what I don't get: Leahy and the gang are hounding Gonzalez over Lam, Iglesias, and McKay. Yet from what I'm reading, the Justice Dept. had plausible reasons for firing each of them. Yes there's a lot of gray area, but I don't see anyone actually digging into the facts.

Take Lam for instance. The idea is that Justice (with urging from the White House) fired her because her Cunningham investigation was widening to include other, more important Republicans. Like Rep. Jerry Lewis. Sounds plausible. There are plenty of documents flying around showing that Lam was doing a decent job on immigration crime, thus undercutting the nominal reason she was fired. But there's one thing that's not being covered: what's the current state of the Lewis investigation? Is it ongoing, or has it in fact been killed. Because if it's still ongoing, then you can't very well accuse Gonzalez and/or Rove of firing Lam in order to protect Lewis, can you?

Also look at Iglesias. The idea here is that Iglesias was fired because he didn't investigate voter fraud in New Mexico. Significantly, he was clearly taking political heat from Senator Domenici and Rep. Wilson. Once again, it sounds plausible that Iglesias was ousted for not using his office to pursue political advantage. And yet, no one seems to be asking whether those voter fraud investigations have commenced in New Mexico. Have they? If they haven't, then what would be the point of booting Iglesias?

Same applies to McKay, who supposedly was sent packing because he declined to continue investigating voter fraud in the Washington State governor's election. Is that office now pursuing the investigation further? If not, how could dismissing McKay serve political ends? And from another perspective, the decision to proceed with the investigation is, in the end, a judgment call. McKay saw it his way, it's entirely conceivable that, having reviewed the facts, Sampson, Gonzalez, et. al. saw it a different way.

Of course it's possible that politics motivated the firings, and that Gonzalez and/or Rove were in fact firing USA's in order to effect political gains. But that's still pretty much up in the air, pending more conclusive evidence. If we knew the state of all those investigations, or if journalists were interviewing other members of those USA's offices, we'd have a much better perspective of the possible motivations. Unfortunately Leahy, Schumer, and Waxman, along with the press, seem more intent on bringing perjury charges than on really investigating the causes for those dismissals.